Equal Eats

A website detailing our proposition for increasing the acceptance of SNAP benefits at farmers markets. Includes interactive maps built with ArcGIS to display data.

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Inspiration

This project was inspired by my weekly volunteer effort at the Williamsburg Farmers' Market. As I gained familiarity with behind the scenes operations of the market, I learned that the market allows customers to use SNAP benefits at the market. This was interesting to me because I am from a low-income, rural area where farmers markets were a key part of my connection to my community. Upon discovering that the Williamsburg market had a system in place to make healthy food more accessible for lower-income individuals, I was eager to see if my local market offered the same. Unfortunately, I found that it did not, which was disappointing given how many people could benefit from it. This realization became the foundation for our project. We aimed to create a resource that highlights the importance of making farmers markets more accessible to SNAP recipients and provides interactive maps that aid in displaying the data we used to back up our position.

What it does

Our website functions as a tool to display our research. It is home to the two ArcGIS maps we created that display key elements for explaining the purpose of our research. The goal was to create a resource that fully explains and convinces farmers' market organizers why it is essential to implement a program for accepting SNAP benefits.

How we built it

The maps were built with ArcGIS online. We layered datasets on one of the maps to label farmers markets that accept SNAP benefits on a basemap of Virginia counties shaded according to the percentage of the population eligible for the SNAP program. To host this maps and additional research, we built a website using html and css. We worked to ensure each tab on the site is styled the way we envisioned and is not overwhelming to read.

Challenges we ran into

A major challenge for us was figuring out how to deploy our site and create a functioning url for it. This was not something we had any experience with and it required much research in how to do it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of learning how to embed the arcgis maps into the html code. Neither of us had experience with these platforms prior to this project, so managing to combine the two tools was a major success!

What we learned

We learned essential html functions to build our website. We also learned how to use ArcGIS to build the maps and display the data we were interested in.

What's next for Equal Eats

We plan to continue being involved with farmers' markets, either by volunteering or advocating for expanding the SNAP program.

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